ephemerisle

Our vision for seasteading is to improve government through competition, and my personal talents lie in seeing possibilities and starting initiatives. Many groups and organizations in the past have tried their hand at the audacious task of creating innovative societies, and I saw the possibility for seasteading to powerfully advance this idea with our unique approach. Thus was born The Seasteading Institute in 2008, as a marvelous addition to the practical politics portfolio.

Much important movement-building and research work remains here at the Institute, and we believe there is also important work to be done in the commercial sector, by creating businesses that benefit individuals through better laws. From both a personal and organizational standpoint, the time is right for me to pursue the vision of government innovation by shifting my primary focus to creating new commercial ventures that will complement the work here at the Institute. I look forward to sharing more details about my projects as they become more solid.

I’m excited to announce that I've found a great executive team to take over and continue to grow The Seasteading Institute: Michael Keenan and Randy Hencken. I will stay significantly involved as Chairman of the Board, media and diplomatic spokesperson, and strategic advisor, as well as promoting seasteading through our in-progress book Seasteading: How Ocean Cities Will Reinvent Politics. While it is a bittersweet moment for me, I believe my talents are best suited to continuing to expand our portfolio of ventures, while Michael and Randy have the passion and talent to take The Seasteading Institute to the next level.

Similarly, two other staff members—Max Marty, Director of Business Strategy and Dario Mutabdzija, Director of Legal Strategy—are wrapping up their research and preparing to start Blueseed, a shipsteading venture, as their contribution to expanding the movement. A commercial sector is vital to seasteading progress, and so we’re thrilled that Max and Dario are helping lead the charge to this next frontier for seasteading, and we’re excited to see where their adventure takes them.

As you can see in this newsletter, we have lots of great progress to report, and Michael and Randy will continue to add new programs to advance the seasteading mission. If you’re interested in reading about the details of our motivation for this expansion, the staff and program changes, and the new ventures, this page has more information.

(We’d like to apologize for the delay in formally making this announcement. Some of you who are in the Ephemerisle community may have already heard about it informally. We have been behind on our communications over the last couple of months.)

The Seasteading Institute has made the reluctant decision to table its Ephemerisle program at this time. We are not currently planning events for 2011 or beyond.

We regret to tell our community that after much discussion this week, we are canceling Ephemerisle 2010 due to insurance costs. The estimate for insurance-related expenses has risen from an early estimate of $55,000 to a total of $135,000, with much of the jump happening a week ago. This caused us to take a long, hard look at Ephemerisle’s budget and the ROI of the event as a whole.

As you probably know, the long-term goal for Ephemerisle is to be an incremental path towards seasteading, by cutting down the challenges along every dimension, and then advancing year by year. Here are some of the dimensions, and how we are making progress this year:

There are a wide variety of opinions in the seasteading community about whether Ephemerisle is a plausible path to full seasteading. [Here’s my pre-event pitch of why Ephemerisle is useful](http://www.seasteading.org/blogs/main/2009/08/05/why-ephemerisle-matters-to-seasteading). Post-event, I have an additional thought.

Our [Ephemerisle](http://ephemerisle.org/) structure and setup basically worked as plan, with a few exceptions. One is that it took longer than we expected, and was not completed by the noon Friday starting time (although everything did come together for Saturday evening).

The website & blogs have been quiet because we’ve been very busy (obviously) with the conference & Ephemerisle, James & I just got back last night. I suspect this will be a bit of a decompression week for us, so don’t expect to hear much this week either, but I’ll try to get some links and roundups posted when I can.